Northern Ireland Troubles Quotes

After the allied victory of 1918, at the end of my father's war, the victors divided up the lands of their former enemies. In the space of just seventeen months, they created the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East. And I have spent my entire career — in Belfast and Sarajevo, in Beirut and Baghdad — watching the people within those borders burn.

When people are faced with a choice between the Northern Ireland they have got and the perfect Northern Ireland, they complain. But in the real world that isn't the choice.

Obviously one of the things that poets from Northern Ireland and beyond - had to try to make sense of was what was happening on a day-to-day political level.

I certainly notice the vitality in Belfast, which wasn't there in the Seventies. There was a war going on then. Now there are cranes everywhere. There really is a sense of renewal and hope.

Before I read the 'Bloody Sunday' script, I have to admit I hadn't thought about it that much. There was probably even part of me which assumed there was no smoke without fire. That the Catholics who were shot must have done something to provoke such a response from the army. I was extremely ignorant of the whole situation.

I think a lot of us who grew up in Northern Ireland weren't politicised enough, frankly.

It... is the best opportunity we've had in the last 25 years to bring about a settlement in Northern Ireland, and I think we should leave no stone unturned to achieve that.

I grew up in Derry, of course, and it was - Derry was the worst example of Northern Ireland's discrimination.

A lot of people of my Ulster Protestant background would have been very suspicious of the notion of a film about Bloody Sunday. Our fear would have been that it would be terribly anti-Britain and anti-soldiers: a piece of nationalist propaganda.

All you would hear every night on the news was that somebody had been shot dead in a certain part of Belfast. We lived opposite a judge, and there were always soldiers crouched down in our garden. We'd sit and talk to them, and I even used to sing to them!

If you are a Northern Irish actor, maybe subconsciously more than consciously, you do have an instinctive responsibility at some point to tackle the recent history of where we have come from. It's not only a responsibility, but a privilege.

Once [Irish] Catholics and Protestants get used to our presence they will hate us more than they hate each other.

If I had stayed in Belfast, my life there wouldn't have as easy as it was in Scotland. I see the strain on the people who stayed. Always worrying about the safety of their children.